


bury my love (i wish i could)

by disarmed



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 14:45:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1652453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarmed/pseuds/disarmed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is the phantom touch of a hand in her hair, fingers on the flesh of her jaw, and an ocean waiting to pour itself drop by drop from the corners of her leaking eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bury my love (i wish i could)

**Author's Note:**

> i don't think i'll ever feel right again after that finale. it is physical pain to watch that episode and what have i done? watched it on repeat. title/work inspired by jaymes young's 'moondust.'

There is the phantom touch of a hand in her hair, fingers on the flesh of her jaw, and an ocean waiting to pour itself drop by drop from the corners of her leaking eyes.

'Please don't leave me,' she begs into the emptiness, that phantom hand still lingering against her face, or so she may be forcing herself to believe. The ocean is growing rougher, a storm is brewing behind her eyes, the waves are roiling and the winds are cold.

In her mind there are the shapes of words, the contours of a face, the tilt of a head. She will be told later she imagined it and later she may be believe it, but in this moment she knows words are leaving his mouth, from the lips she called home but will never find sanctuary in again. She doesn't know what they are but she might if she tried.

' _Please_ , come back to me,' she pleads, voice as broken as it has ever been, the feeling of her heart in her chest like that of flesh being rendered from bone. She wants to reach out, she wants to show her ghost that she won't give up, that she will reach for him in this world and the next, but she can not bring her hand to leave her own side, and in herself she feels like she has failed again, because she wants him to know, she needs him to know, and she can't do it.

She can't.

 

 

When she turns she turns with the bright flare of hope. Maybe. Just maybe. Because this cannot be her reality, not after everything, not after all these years, not after all this time of living and dying and trying to find a future that people had told her was impossible and out of reach but her hope is dashed because the man behind her is not the one she had hoped for, but by the Gods he's one she needs.

'He's gone,' and she knows that Alaric can see the ocean in her eyes and the way her boat has been capsized, and her pulls her to him and lets her unleash the tides upon his shoulder, and Elena only wishes it were enough for her.

Nothing will ever be enough.

They could harness her the powers of the sun and she could smite a thousand men but it will never be enough.

Forever on will she search for something that she'll never find, and she could be handed trinkets and baubles and words and support, but there will be an emptiness inside of her that can never be filled no matter who tries and how hard. Her soul will yearn and her heart will yield, and she will be the husk of the woman she could have been with him beside her.

Alaric is warmth and resurrection pressed against her, and he reminds her not only of a safer place but also of _him_ , and it only serves to make Elena press her face into his neck harder, let the waves become tidal and crash upon them with little grace.

 

 

_'BONNIE.'_

Elena hears it and she knows the voice. She recognises the urgency. Her body starts to sing with the animalistic senses that her vampire self was born and bred with, it picks up on the panic and the fear, and she tears herself from Alaric's shoulder to look at him questioningly.

He doesn't have the answer.

And oh, _oh_ does it burn her to leave the place that she knows her ghost last was, but she walks up and she walks away because she is Elena Gilbert and she has to carry on. Her brother's voice is ripping through the forest and she can hear his blood pumping in his veins and she can sense the urgency in his footfalls, almost as fast as his heartbeat.

_'BONNIE.'_

She steps out into the body of the forest and the bodies of her friends, sharing looks of _what_ and _who_ and then Jeremy is bursting through to them, but he has no eyes for his sister or his friends or the resurrected, in that moment he stares across the gates and Elena feels her heart break all over again as her eyes slide the distance over to where Bonnie is standing, alone in the clearing and Elena thinks, _God no, please don't have to do this alone._

Then she is gone, and Elena hears her brother's anguished cry and the world is spinning and she can't take it - she physically can not take it any more - but she does, she steels herself and she goes to where Jeremy has dropped to his knees, and she wraps herself around him and holds him tight, because she is his sister and she will be there until the end, and for Jeremy it feels like the end, and nothing anyone can say will make him feel otherwise.

He sobs into her chest like he did when he was five and she was eight, and she'd held him then and she'll hold him now, but his tears burn holes in her skin and the wretched sounds from his throat make her lose her breath, so she holds him tighter.

 

Her first step back into the Boarding House nearly makes her vomit.

Sickness curls in her gut and it take Alaric's firm hand on her shoulder to steady her, but then Stefan is behind her and she hears the catch in his breath and she thinks, _once more, Elena, you weren't the only one to lose to today_. She turns, ready to hold Stefan, but Caroline is there, her hands around his neck and her forehead pressed against his and Elena doesn't even care when the realisation comes, she just thinks, _oh_ , and then moves toward the stairs.

Each step is lead and her body feels weak, and everywhere along the way she is reminded of him and every step feels a little closer to Hell, and then she pushes open his bedroom door and almost groans at the gnawing ache of loss in her chest. She resists the press of her face to the pillows and the inhaling of bedsheets. She washes her face in the pristine sink and refuses to look into the mirror. She ties up her hair and changes her shirt, and then she drags herself back down the stairs again.

Stefan is hunched over a glass and Caroline is hunched beside him. Tyler is holding the bottle. Alaric is stoking a fire that no one really cares about, and Jeremy and Matt are nowhere in sight.

'Where are you going?' Alaric asks as soon as he looks up.

Elena stares listlessly into the flames. 'I can't leave him there,' she whispers, and images of burnt bodies and the acrid smell of flesh singes through her senses. 'I won't leave him there.'

She doesn't know what she expects. Resistance, perhaps? But none comes, they all silently get to their feet, Jeremy and Matt appear from around the corner, and they follow her out the front door.

 

 

'I love you,' she says as she drops to her knees beside the burnt corpse. Her tears drop onto the blackened skin, and her hands hover over tattered leather and denim. 'God, I love you.' She knows she's talking to nothing but a husk, a remnant of the man who owns her heart, and when she looks up into the unrecognisable features she unleashes a sound she didn't know she was capable of making and throws herself onto the body, face buried into burned leather and singed flesh, and it takes the might of an army to pull her away.

Stefan covers him up and hoists him up, and when Elena shares a look with him she sees the echoing storm in his own eyes, and he leaves the Grill with the body of his brother over his shoulder.

'Mom?'

'Caroline.'

Elena shifts to watch Caroline rip apart rubble to get to her mother, who is staggering out on shaking legs.

'You weren't supposed to be in here!' Caroline says as she pulls Liz to her, pressing careful kisses into blonde hair. 'You could have died - you wouldn't have come back - _mom_.' Caroline sobs and holds her mother tight before tearing at the skin of her wrist and healing Liz's aches and burns.

Elena turns on her heel and leaves the wreckage. She lingers by the Camaro, has fleeting thoughts of repair, and then she stares at the place where her own burnt corpse had been earlier.

'Come on, Elena.'

Alaric is at her side again, hand a gentle pressure on her back, and Elena thinks, _thank God for Alaric Saltzman._

 

 

She sleeps for an age. She buries herself in his sheets, remembering a time when _his_ was _theirs_ and cries the ocean into the pillows.

People come.

Hands linger on her shoulders and she turns away, voices drift in and out like waves on the shore, and she turns it all off and turns it all away, lying there in the night and wondering what would happen if she really did turn it off - if she just flipped the switch and let it go because by God it would be easier than having to deal with this, having to feel this, every day for the rest of her life.

Somewhere between dreams and dusk and dawn she rolls over and sees his face, sombre and silent in the space next to her, and she fears blinking because as soon as she does she knows he'll be gone, and so she stares into the brevity of the mirage until exhaustion shuts her eyes for her and he is lost to her again.

 

 

'He'd want to be free,' says Stefan quietly on a morning when they're alone.

It is not even dawn. He and Elena are the only ones up. Surprisingly. They are nursing glasses and loss, huddled together on the porch, eyes vacant and bodies cold.

'I know,' she says in reply, and squeezes her eyes shut because she doesn't want to think of Damon as nothing but moon dust, even though what's left is near to nothing, sad remains of greatness, but she knows what Stefan means and she knows what Stefan wants, so she nods and says _I know_ again, over and over until she isn't sure if she really knows anything or nothing at all.

 

 

They talk about what to do with the ashes.

'Mystic Falls was his home,' says Elena hollowly, 'but would he want to be here forever?'

Stefan shrugs. 'He'd want to be wherever you are.'

She feels the ocean behind her eyes again.

 

 

She tells Stefan to do what he thinks is right.

One afternoon he comes back and asks for her hand. She gives it to him tiredly. In it he places Damon's daylight ring, and Elena stares desolately down at it before Stefan closes her fingers and kisses her forehead.

Elena doesn't know what she wants to do more: Throw it across the room or squeeze it so hard it brings blood from skin.

 

 

She is taking a shower, feeling the steam burn rivulets into her skin, a heavy reminder of her their suicide run, eyes shut and teeth clenched as she scratches hard at her skin just to feel. She stays beneath the water longer every day, wishing she didn't know what it would be like to die by drowning, to feel her lungs filled with water.

Tragically poetic, she thinks as she turns off the water and steps out, she has died by both fire and ice.

She wipes the condensation from the mirror and sees him standing behind her.

She whirls so fast the world blurs, but there is nothing but an empty bathroom filled with steam, so she falls to the floor and cries into her wet knees, clutching the ring on a silver chain around her neck like it just might make a difference.

 

 

She is drowning herself in bourbon in the early hours of the morning, glass forgone for the bottle, staring at the dying embers of the once-blazing fire that Alaric had started hours ago. She swallows her sorrows in the swigs of the bottle and enjoys the way it hurts her throat. Any feeling is something these days, any feeling that isn't loss, that is.

She can hear him in this room.

_I will never leave you again._

She can herself in another.

_You lied._

She gets up and throws the bottle at the fire. It smashes against the mantle and glass sprays across the floor.

_Elena._

Her head turns and she sees him, out the corner of her eye, a shadow dancing along the edges, and she turns her whole body and chases that shadow on the edge of her vision until she's spinning in circles and then she's on the floor, clutching her head in her hands and crying out for somebody, anybody to help her, and when hands curl around her shoulders she doesn't know who they belong to her, but she trusts in them enough to let herself go, and she blacks out.

 

 

'I think I'm going crazy,' she tells Jeremy.

They are sitting in her car on Wickery Bridge, the sun is behind the clouds and the air is still, and Elena thinks she may be losing her mind.

'We all feel that way -'

'No,' she says, and rests her head on the steering wheel. 'I think I'm actually going crazy, Jer.' She pulls back to look at them, hating the way his eyes narrow in pity but finding comfort in the understanding she sees there as well. 'I'm seeing him everywhere.'

The admittance makes her almost giddy.

'I know,' says Jeremy, and Elena's eyes widen as she stares at him. 'I see Bonnie everywhere, too.'

Elena lets out a choked sound. 'You do?'

Jeremy leans his head back against the seat. 'Of course I do. I loved her. She's in this town. She's everywhere. She's in everyone. Of course I see her.'

'No,' says Elena brokenly. 'That's not what I meant. I _see_ him, Jer. I literally see him -'

Jeremy reaches over and puts his hand on hers. 'It'll pass, Elena.'

 

 

Alaric is driving past the Grill, restored to its somewhat former glory by the generous donation of the Salvatore account, while Elena stares resolutely out the windscreen. She can not bring herself to look just yet, can't bring herself to go in, because her dreams are haunted by Camaros and flames and the words _I know_ repeated over and and over and over until she wants to throw them all up and destroy them from her vocabulary.

She is staring resolutely out the windscreen when from the corner of her eye she sees a flash of black jacket and black hair, and she almost breaks her neck when she shifts in her chair to look back.

'Stop the car.'

Alaric says, 'what -' but she yanks on the hand break. They pitch forward in their seats and Alaric swears, but Elena hasn't taken her eyes off the man standing on the pavement outside the Grill, and she rips off her seatbelt and ignores the furious response from other drivers as she skirts around cars and pays no attention to Alaric as he staggers out of the driver's side.

'I can see you,' she says, and a waitress carrying a tray of drinks passes between them and there's nothing. 'No.' Elena's eyes widen and she stumbles onto the pavement. 'No, no, no, _no_.' She whirls around, eyes searching frantically, ignorant of the people staring and whispering. 'Where are you?' she hisses around the tables, and then Alaric is snatching her from the side walk and out of her panic.

'Who can you see, Elena?' he asks pressingly, his fingers digging into the flesh of her arms as he forces her to look at him.

She can not meet his eyes, too busy searching the streets. 'I saw him. I _know_ I saw him.'

'Elena,' and she knows that tone and she refuses, tearing herself from him because she knows its absurd and she knows its insane but this is how she feels and she can't get him out of her head and _please God make it stop please make it stop I can't take this._

 

 

They all know.

She can feel the tension when she enters the room. She can feel their eyes on her. She wants to rip them all apart and she wants to cry herself to sleep. She doesn't know how to handle it any more. She spends more time with her hand on the chain around her throat considering that maybe what she's doing is killing herself by wearing it.

She wants to take it off, but she can never do it, it's a part of her, it's the only part of him left. The only part that isn't dust and memory. It is not the slick slide of his voice down her spine when they're in the throws of lust, nor is it the warmth of his cheek upon hers when she is in need of comfort, but it is something, even though it is not enough.

Sometimes she wishes it would stop. That she didn't see him around every corner and in every mirror, in the reflection of her glass or the shine of a vase. But she desperately does want to see him, and that's the problem. She finds herself chasing those shadows in her the corners of her eyes with no regard for anybody else, whether they be in the middle of a conversation or a sermon at church, it wouldn't matter; a glimpse of his face and she'll take off after it without a second thought, even when she stops searching and returns empty handed.

 

 

They try to do something normal.

It is for all their benefits but mostly for hers. Movies and blood bags and sweet food and blankets, bodies a pile of warmth as they come together in the Boarding House, and when Elena lies down on the couch with her head in Alaric's lap and her feet on Tyler's she finds herself feeling more exhausted than she had ever thought, and when Alaric pets her hair gently and Tyler throws a blanket over her legs, she falls easily to sleep.

She dreams the same dreams. Blue eyes and blue cars. Fire and gas. _I know._ Broken bones and burning heat. _Please come back to me._

She opens her eyes and the room is quiet. The television has been turned off and the lights are out. The fire is almost done. Tyler is not by her feet and Alaric is not beneath her head, but the blanket is wrapped tight around her. She stares into the darkness, waiting to see him, knowing that it is times like this that he will come to her, but there is nothing.

She squeezes her eyes shut and wishes, because she just wants to see his face, she just needs him, she just -

_Elena._

She keeps her eyes shut tight and feels the hot slide of tears on her cheeks, wetting her mouth and hair.

_Elena._

There is the phantom touch of a hand in her hair, fingers on the flesh of her jaw, and an ocean waiting to pour itself drop by drop from the corners of her leaking eyes.

'Please come back to me,' she begs brokenly to the empty air.

The touch fades and she opens her eyes.

She is still alone.

 

 

'I need your help.'

Liv almost chokes on the blood that's welling in her mouth as she laughs. 'Why would I -'

'So help me,' says Elena coldly, as she moves her hands around Luke's head so that his neck twists past the point of pain, 'I'll kill him, and there's no way he's coming back this time.'

Liv looks like she's weighing up her options. 'You wouldn't,' she says, but she lacks fire, and Elena's eyes are hard; Liv can see it. 'What do you want?'

'Answers.' Elena doesn't let go of Luke. 'When the other side went down - I need to know, can you come back from that?'

Liv's eyes narrow. 'I don't know. I don't know what happened. I don't know if you could bring back someone from oblivion, Elena, I'm a witch not a fucking angel of the lord.'

'I _don't_ ,' says Elena with a movement that makes Luke gasp in pain, 'appreciate the tone. I'll let you in on a little secret,' she says to the woman bound to the chair in front of her, 'I'm seeing someone who's supposed to be dead, _everywhere_. I'm going crazy, and I don't know how much longer I can take it. I am at my breaking point, and I need help.'

Liv eyes her warily. 'You think you can see -'

'I _know_ I can,' cuts in Elena with a voice like ice. 'But I don't know how.'

'The world is filled with magic, Elena, magic that is raw and untapped that we don't even know about yet.' Liv shakes her head. 'In this world that we live in, anything is possible.' She bows her head, ignored her brother's whimpers, and when she looks back up and meets Elena's eyes there is something in them that Elena can't place. 'You know yourself more than anybody, Elena.'

'What does that mean?'

Liv shakes her head. 'If you believe in something, or someone, you don't give up on them; I've seen it. I know it. It's an imperative part of who you are.'

Elena feels her fingers itch with the urge to kill, to scent blood on the air. She throws Luke to the ground so hard he is knocked unconscious. 'I would kill him,' she says, face void of emotion, 'just to have you know pain.' She surges forward into Liv's face, teeth sharp and breath hot on the witch's face. 'But I would not wish _this_ on anyone.'

 

 

She is driving home, taking solace in the stars and the silence of the empty streets while the midnight hour thrives.

Absently, she checks her rear vision mirror. Her breath catches.

'I don't know what's happening any more,' she admits slowly as she looks back to the road. 'I don't know what's real and what's not.' Her fingers tighten on the steering wheel. Her knuckles go white. 'I don't know if I can keep doing this. I don't know if I want it to stop.'

The road is clear in front of her.

She is coming up to Wickery Bridge.

'I could end it,' she says quietly. 'We could be together. Is that how it works? Would I meet you there?' She presses down harder on the accelerator, watches the needle rise as the view whips past the windows faster and faster. 'This would stop though, right? I'd stop second guessing myself?' The bridge draws closer. She swallows thickly, stares straight ahead.

The wheels hit the bridge.

'Third time's a charm, right?'

There is breath. Hot and warm breathing down her neck.

_No, Elena._

She slams on the brakes and the car skids ten metres before coming to a stop. She is shaken, completely and utterly wrecked, heart pumping so fast it almost gives up on itself. It takes her a long moment to reach with a shaking hand to touch at her neck, and even longer to look up in the rear vision mirror.

He's gone from the back seat, the blue eyes that had burned into hers nothing but memory.

 

 

'I'm not crazy,' she tells them all, 'I tried to drive my car off Wickery Bridge and he stopped me. I'm not crazy.'

She is expecting the chorus of incredulity and anger and confusion and upset, and she ignores it.

'Elena -'

' _No_ , Stefan,' she says, and lifts her chin. 'I'm _not_ crazy. I'm not seeing things. I know he's still here, he's not gone. He's not dead.'

She can see the pity in their eyes. 'We cremated -'

'He. Isn't. Gone.' Her voice wavers but her resolve is strong. 'He fought for me, he's always fought for me, and I'm not going to stop fighting for him. Nothing any of you say or do will change that.'

 

 

She goes to bed that night and sleeps fitfully, painfully, throwing herself about the bed in sweats and whimpers. There is fire and flesh and pain and it licks up her spine and invades her mind and she wishes for the ocean.

There is the phantom touch of a hand in her hair.

She opens her eyes to the first rays of dawn and the smile of the man she loves. She stares back for a long moment before blinking. He is still there.

'I know I'm not crazy,' she whispers into the small space between them. His lips quirk. 'I know I'm not. I'm not giving up on us.' But she is tired, and she closes her eyes, but she knows it doesn't matter because she'll see him again, she's sure of it.

Fingers on the flesh of her jaw.

Her eyes open again.

He is still there.

Elena thinks that this may be the most cruel of all visits yet. A tease, unobtainable and fleeting, but lingering enough to cause her more grief. She feels the water rise behind her eyes; feels the storm start up again.

A smile.

Fingers on the flesh of her jaw.

It feels so real. It feels so real and Elena sobs, pressing her face into the pillows and shaking as she cries because this will surely be her end. But _oh,_ if it means she gets to see his face and feel his touch then she will take it, she will take it over and _over_ again because these fleeting, teasing moments are better than the overwhelming emptiness she feels when he isn't there.

'Please come back to me,' she begs softly, 'come back to me.'

Fingers on the flesh of her jaw.

_Elena._

'God,' she moans, and can't bring herself to open her eyes because this is ripping her apart, slowly, intimately, in all the ways it hurts the most. 'I love you,' she murmurs sadly, 'please come back to me.'

_Elena._

'Come back to me.'

'Elena.'

Fingers on the flesh of her jaw.

'Please.'

'Elena.'

She doesn't know how long she cries for, she cries most days now anyway, but when the sunlight becomes brighter she finally shifts and wipes at her eyes, blinking them open in expectation of an empty bed.

His smile is soft and kind.

'Elena.'

She feels her heart break again. 'Don't do this to me,' she begs. He reaches out, and Elena's eyes map the skin of his arm, the veins she knows so well.

There is the touch of a hand in her hair.

She stills.

His smile grows. 'Elena.'

_Fingers_ on the flesh of her jaw.

'No,' she says, jerking back in reflex. She clutches at the sheets. 'No.' The tears start to spill again. 'Are you -' She doesn't even wait, she doesn't even care, she throws herself across the bed and when he catches her she cries out, presses herself to him to feel his warmth and his comfort and his arms around her are safety and home and everything Elena has ever wished for in all her life. 'I love you,' she says with all the feeling she can muster, 'I love you -'

'I know,' he says, and his voice is a benediction upon her eyes and she reaches up and cups his jaw and kisses him and when his tongue slides across her lower lip and into her mouth she sees stars. 'I told you,' he says against her lips. 'I promised -'

'You did,' she says, and digs her fingers into his flesh. 'I knew - I _knew_ you weren't -'

'I was.'

Elena just stares, smile giddy and eyes awed, and he kisses her again. 'It's not over, is it?' she asks softly, and he shakes his head. 'Bonnie -'

He nods. 'We've got some work to do.' He strokes her hair back off her face. 'It was you who kept me tethered here, though.' There's something in his eyes - 'You wouldn't give up on me.'

Elena kisses him again, tries to show him, 'I would never give up on you.' She searches his face, 'I _love_ you, Damon.'

He smiles, the biggest one yet. 'I know, Elena.'

There is the touch of a hand in her hair, fingers on the flesh of her jaw, and an ocean waiting to pour itself drop by drop from the corners of her leaking eyes. 


End file.
